Page 15 - GALIET Dido's Triplicity and Aeneas' Duplicity

the hospes Italicus dialogue, are attributed to a feminine voice rather than a masculine one (Latinus or Evander).
In Naevius’ Bellum Punicum 1 fragment 17, evidence shows Aeneas reaching Italy rather than Latium, suggesting a possible meeting if and only if Aeneas had been tempest-tossed to Dido’s Carthage. Servius’ commentary cites Varro for a different version in which Anna, Dido’s sister, commits suicide for love of Aeneas suggesting that Anna, unbeknown to Dido, has an affair with Aeneas as implied by Virgil (IV, 420). Horsfall doubts whether Varro needs to introduce Anna if he knows of Timaeus’ Dido and her African Prince. Yet, Horsfall also refers to Tertullian’s, Minucius’, Felix’s and Jerome’s25 reverence of Dido as the epitome of chastity: the grand dame of univira who prefers death than to violate Sychaeus’ memory with a second marriage. Horsfall concludes that the above collection of historical records disfavour Dido.
Spence’s and Farron’s complementary and interdisciplinary criticisms eclipse Horsfall’s historicism. They elucidate on Virgil’s Aeneid by denuding our Aeschylean, Sophoclean, Euripidean complexities. Like Helios, their multi- reading (rhetorical, ethical, psychological, tragic-romantic historical) is insightful. Spence and Farron agree that Dido’s red, loquacious speech seduces lectors over Aeneas’ golden Roman rhetoric. While Spence bases her theory on the enduring impact of Dido’s morally implicated speech shifts (logos/pietas- pathos/furor-silence/power), Farron suggests that Dido’s poetic luring owes to her rightful rage: her sharp allegations are more correct and alluring than
25 Horsfall, N.M. “Dido in the Light of History”, in S.J. Harrsion (ed.), Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid, Oxford 1990: 127-44 (orig. publ. 1973).
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